Industries heat up over boiler rules

The biggest environmental battle of the year isn’t necessarily the most obvious.

Behind the scenes in the halls of Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency, industry lobbyists and lawmakers are working feverishly to water down rules aimed at slashing cancer-causing pollution and other toxic emissions.

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The EPA says 5,000 premature deaths and 36,000 asthma attacks could be prevented annually by regulating emissions from boilers that provide power or heat to facilities such as oil refineries, paper mills and shopping malls.

The fight hasn’t been as high profile as the battles over the Obama administration’s climate regulations or ozone standards, but some environmentalists and industry lobbyists say it’s just as significant.

“This rule promises to deliver the second greatest [lifesaving] of any rule issued by the Obama administration,” said John Walke, clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The only rule that will save more lives, he said, is a forthcoming regulation to cut toxic pollution from power plants.

But as the EPA prepares to roll out its final rules in January, the oil, forest product, chemical and other industries are warning that they will cost hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, and lobbyists have been storming into EPA and congressional offices in recent weeks to make their case.

Lobbyists from the American Petroleum Institute and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association will meet Tuesday with the EPA’s top attorney, Scott Fulton, and Thursday with agency air chief Gina McCarthy.

Their goal: to convince the EPA that it drastically underestimated the costs and potential job losses. “It is clear to us that, if not significantly revised, this proposal will cause the permanent loss of a large number of [well-paying] jobs, well beyond the job losses contemplated in EPA’s economic analyses,” the trade groups said in comments filed with the agency in August.

Many boilers would shut down under the new rules, they said, either because they wouldn’t be able to achieve the strict standards or because the costs would be too high.

Some of the EPA’s friends in Congress have joined stalwart EPA foes like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) in attacking the rules.

Large bipartisan groups in both the House and the Senate have penned letters to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in recent months that echo industries’ concerns, warning of dire economic consequences and urging the agency to set standards that are more favorable to businesses.

More than 100 House members — including 45 Democrats — urged the EPA in August to consider flexible approaches “that could prevent severe job losses and billions of dollars in unnecessary regulatory costs.” Seventeen Senate Democrats last month joined 24 Republicans in sending a separate letter that detailed the same concerns using similar language.